This invention relates to impact polyamide compositions.
A great many potentially useful thermoplastic molding compounds suffer from the disadvantage of being relatively brittle. Polyamides such as nylon, for instance, are ideally suited for many applications because of their strength, rigidity, and other physical and chemical properties. However, polyamides, too, suffer from relatively low impact resistance. Efforts have been made with varying degrees of success to improve the impact strength of relatively rigid, brittle thermoplastic materials by blending therewith a rubbery component. However, as likely as not, such blends result in weak compositions as evidenced by low tensile strength. Copolymers of monovinyl-substituted aromatic compounds and conjugated dienes which have been grafted with an organic nitrogen compound are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,436,865 as being useful to improve tensile strength and also to effect modest improvements in impact strength of poly(arylene sulfide). The ability to effect even a modest improvement of impact strength with an increase rather than a decrease in tensile runs counter to what more generally occurs in these situations.